Threnody
by July Storms
Summary: Anna was taken from him on a Wednesday afternoon in October. A look at Anna and Kristoff's relationship: what it means to love, and what it means to lose.


**Threnody**

(4,317 words)

**Notes**: A "threnody" is a song, poem or speech written _in memoriam_ (Latin for "into memory"); this essentially translates to "in the memory of"—honoring a deceased person. As always, feedback of any sort is appreciated!

* * *

Kristoff once had a great many fears of coming home and finding Anna dead. He dreamt about the possibilities, sometimes, when he harvested ice in the mountains and the space beside him at night was empty. A long fall from the roof or out of a window or even down the stairs was not so very far-fetched; she might hit her head in the bath; or she could tumble into the harbor and drown when her dress grew heavy with water.

In the end, none of these things took her from him.

* * *

The wedding was huge at Anna's request. To compensate for this, their marriage was quiet.

After three children, Kristoff's favorite part of the day became early morning. The pre-dawn hour was the most peaceful part of the day—light crept over the horizon and the fabric of Anna's nightgown was soft under his hands.

She giggled in her sleep when he wrapped an arm around her and his fingers brushed over a ticklish spot.

"Hey," he said. "Wake up."

Her response was to bury her face in the side of his chest, under his arm.

"You're going to drool on me again," he tried.

Anna only sighed, as if she found the idea appealing.

He dug his fingers into her ribs.

"Kristoff!" she squeaked, hands grabbing his and holding them away from her. "The point of snuggling in the morning is _not_ to make me laugh!"

"Okay," he agreed, and she gave him a sleepy, wary look. He couldn't help the smile that tugged at his lips.

That was when _she_ attacked _him_, fingers making him laugh almost before she pushed them under his shirt and against his sides. "I don't _trust_ you," she teased, laughing. "You were going to get me again the moment I let my guard down, weren't you?"

Even when he managed to peel Anna's hands away from him, he couldn't stop laughing.

"Well," he managed to say when they had both caught their breath. "You're awake now."

* * *

It was something long and slow that started with, "I don't feel very well," and ended more than a year later with a hole in the ground and his heart inside it.

The doctors, at a complete loss, suggested that Anna move to a warmer climate. No one was fooled by their catch-all cure, but Anna laughed it off. She said, nose crinkling good-naturedly, "I'm not going to the Southern Isles."

Later that evening, as she brushed her hair for bed—one-hundred strokes exactly every night—she stopped on thirty-seven and said, head tilted in the mirror as she watched him in the reflection, "Should I go?"

He sat up from where he had flopped tiredly across their bed. "Go where?"

"To the Southern Isles." She continued her brushing, counting softly under her breath: "_Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine._"

"Anna."

"_Forty_. Do you think it would help?" She turned to look at him, eyebrows drawn together and down in an expression that eerily reminded him of Elsa when she was afraid.

He had to be honest: "I don't know. It's—they say that about everything. That a warmer climate will help."

The hairbrush made a soft sound as Anna set it on her dressing table, and her shoulders slumped with the weight of her sigh.

Kristoff slid out of bed and picked up the brush again. Without a word, he gathered her hair in his hands to brush it for her. _Forty-one, forty-two_…

"I don't want to leave everyone," she told him. "Not on a guess, anyway. I mean—what's the point, right? If it's going to—if _I'm_ going to—anyway… I'd rather be here, you know, if there's no chance of, well, of me getting _better_."

He hated to hear her talk like that, but swallowed his discomfort. "It's up to you," he said as gently as he could, and kissed the top of her head. It had to be left up to her. It was only right.

It was only when he placed the hairbrush carefully on her dressing table again that she spoke, tilting her head back to look up at him. "I'm staying here," she said, her voice whisper-soft.

He didn't know what to say to that, so he smoothed down her hair with his fingers and finally managed a throaty, "All right."

* * *

"Do you ever wish that you weren't the queen?" Anna asked her sister.

Kristoff looked up from his seat by the window, but said nothing; he bounced his son on his knee, which brought forth the bubbling sound of a child's laughter.

Elsa glanced around the room, gave a small smile, and said, "Well, I suppose I do, sometimes."

"Yeah, you're always so busy."

"I'm sorry." Elsa wiped her palms on the fabric of her skirt. "I'll try to make more time. It's just…right now is difficult. We really do have to try to reopen trade with Weselton."

"I don't see _why_. We've gone all this time without them."

Elsa didn't reply, but she looked troubled. Kristoff understood well enough that Arendelle now needed the alliance with Weselton. The queen, the people whispered, had been a little too hasty in destroying something advantageous.

"Well," Anna said, brushing her bangs back, "I guess if it's not that, it'll be something else. Because you're the queen and all." When Elsa looked down at her hands, Anna shook her head, "It's okay. I mean, it's not your fault. There's nothing you can do about that, which is kind of funny, right? Because you're the queen, so you should be able to make _some_ time for yourself—but you can't." And then, palm rubbing at her face: "I'll just shut up now, so that you can get to your meeting on time."

* * *

Losing Sven had been difficult, but Anna had been there the entire time, bringing hot chocolate and a warm blanket to the stables so that they could both sit up with him until the very end.

When it was over, Kristoff was given a horse, but it wasn't the same—neither the horse's gait nor the companionship it offered him.

"I almost cried when it tried to eat the carrot I was holding," he said to Anna after he returned from his first ice-harvesting season without Sven.

She ran her fingers through his hair and pressed a kiss to his cheek, but she didn't say anything. He suspected that she knew there was nothing that could be said to make anything better, or easier.

Instead, she let her head rest against his shoulder, and fell asleep there.

In the morning, he laughed at the face she made when she woke up to find that she had drooled all over his shirt.

* * *

"What should we name her?" Anna asked when their first child was born.

"I think we should name her after you," he said.

She grinned, but crinkled her nose. "That would get confusing."

"Well, we could name her _indirectly_ after you."

"All right," she agreed. "I used to wish my name was Annelise. Did I ever tell you that?"

"No. Why?"

She shrugged. "Just plain _Anna_ seemed boring, when I was younger. Annelise is prettier."

"Is that what you want to name her?"

"Only if you're okay with it."

"I like it," he said.

"That means you get to name the next one."

"I've already decided what it'll be."

"Oh yeah? What?"

He grinned. "You'll see when the next one's born."

* * *

Kristoff had never deluded himself into thinking that it would be easy to lose Anna, but until the last few weeks of her life, he did not quite understand how difficult it would be.

The pain began, for him, not with the news of her imminent death, but with the physical manifestation of it: evidence that he could not refute.

* * *

"You are _not_ quitting your job!" Anna stared at him with wide eyes, and for the first time, Kristoff really noticed the lines on her face. "I mean—you can't! You _love_ your job! Ice is your life, remember?"

"And I love you and the kids more."

"But—"

"Anna, please. I need to be _here_, now. At home. With you. I'm quitting. End of discussion."

* * *

It was easy to pretend, at first, that everything was all right. Kristoff had never been the type of person to mourn early; he dealt with problems as they arrived.

Anna had both good at bad days, and at first, the good days were actually good, and the bad days tolerable.

On the good days, Anna liked to go outside and sit under the trees in the garden; she held Kristoff's hand and pointed out the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth.

"You're getting old."

He grinned, which deepened the lines, and asked, "I look pretty good for my age, though, don't I?"

She always said, after a long, dramatic pause: "Yes. Very handsome."

The kids joined them for lunch on those days. They helped the servants carry all of Anna's favorite foods out; he suspected it made them feel as if they were doing something to aid in her comfort.

Over dessert, it was their tradition to ask Anna to tell them a story. She never refused this request.

"Now, you remember Marshmallow, right?" At their nod, she continued, "Some say he's still up there, wandering the mountains, and that he chases the poor ice harvesters away from the queen's cliffside palace."

"I never saw him once all the years I worked up there," Kristoff said.

"Hush, you. You're ruining a perfectly good story. So anyway, the first time we saw him, he chased your father and I for what felt like _miles_…"

* * *

"So what name did you decide on?" Anna asked. Their second child, another daughter, was curled up against her mother's chest, sleeping.

Kristoff's face turned red. "I had a name," he said, "but for a son."

"Too bad. You have to name her."

"Well, if we named Annelise after you, then it's only fair to name our second daughter after your sister, right?"

"Indirectly?"

"Yeah."

"Elsie?"

"That's cute."

They both looked at their daughter's wrinkled face and Kristoff laughed. "I think it fits."

"You're going to name the next one for real," Anna told him, and pinched his arm hard.

* * *

The fact that he was going to lose her didn't hit him, not fully, until she needed his help.

Anna had never _needed_ him before, not for anything.

Oh, she would tell him that she did, but he always knew that she was capable of doing everything on her own.

That was why it hurt him so much, why it _frightened_ him, when she said, "Kristoff? Would you, uhm, help me? I need to go to the bathroom, and," she laughed, but it sounded forced, "my body just isn't cooperating for some reason"

* * *

Anna, bedridden? It sounded like a sick joke. He could not remember having ever seen her bedridden. Even when she had been hours from delivering her first child, she'd paced around the castle—to the frustration of everyone. After the delivery, she had stayed in bed for the night, but the next morning had been up at dawn, saying, "Look, Kristoff! Isn't she perfect? Isn't she lovely?"

The kids came to see her every day when she could no longer leave her bed. They made up stories of adventure and daring to rival her own, and no matter how tired she was, Anna always managed to stay awake to hear them.

* * *

"So what's that name for a son you had picked out?"

"That was years ago."

"Well, now we have a son, so now you have to name him."

Kristoff rolled his eyes. "Well, I guess I was thinking… Well, it's not _exactly_ after me, but do you remember what you called me on accident, when we first met?"

"Sure. Christopher, right?" She smiled at him.

"Yeah. That's what I was thinking."

"Ooh, I like that. One named after each of us. It's perfect."

* * *

"Play for me," she told him one day, buried under five quilts in early September.

He laughed. "Are you sure?" He was only tolerable at best on the mandolin.

"Yeah," she said, smiling. "The song you and Sven used to sing together."

His face reddened in embarrassment. "I'd have to change the words, I guess. They don't really apply anymore."

"I don't need the words. Just the music."

He took the instrument down from its place against the wall and sat on the bed beside her, his back against the large headboard. "All right," he agreed.

She smiled as he fumbled his way through playing the song; he had never been very good at playing; it was just something fun he had picked up long ago to pass the lonely evening hours.

When he finished she said, "Again."

And when he finished a second time, she whispered, only half-awake, "Again."

* * *

She said, "I love you," so often that Kristoff wondered if her memory was growing poor.

"It scares the kids when you do that," he told her one morning.

"I just want them to know." Her voice had grown raspy and soft, her skin pale; she had lost weight and looked as if the bed could swallow her.

"The girls were crying in their room last night," he said, gently.

"I have to say it, Kristoff." She looked down at her hands; they always trembled a little bit, and he took them in his as if it might help. Her eyes, duller than he had ever seen them, met his. "I _am_ going to die, you know."

She didn't need to add, "and soon," to that sentence; the implication was obvious.

"I know," he said, but didn't want to think about it.

"I don't want them to forget. I've no reason _not_ to say it. I want to say it for as long as I can."

His chest tightened even though he willed it not to. He turned away so that she could not see his face.

"Will you play for me again, before you go to breakfast?"

He picked up the mandolin from where it leaned against his nightstand and settled himself beside her on the bed. "Sure. I guess I could do that."

When he was done playing, when the last note of that ridiculous old duet he'd made up faded from the air, she brushed her hand against his arm and said, "Thank you."

His, "You're welcome," came automatically.

He was opening the door to their room when she said, sleepily, "It reminds me of when we met."

"That song?"

"Yeah. I knew… There was something about you…"

He smiled. "Did you want me to bring you anything?"

"I'm not hungry."

He swallowed thickly; she had not been hungry for days. "All right. I'll be back soon."

"I love you," she told him, her voice nothing more than a whisper.

"Always," he said before he closed the door.

* * *

The spark faded from her eyes. She stopped asking for music, stopped saying, "I love you"—she just…stopped.

One evening, she fell asleep while he played for her, and the next morning she did not wake up again. She breathed, lived, and the youngest two kids cried when they came to visit her.

"She's never waking up again, is she?" Annelise asked, her hands folded neatly on her lap.

"There—well, there's a _chance_," he tried.

She stared at her hands for a long minute, and then bit her lower lip. "Say goodbye," she urged her sister and brother before she herself stood and leaned over to kiss her mother's forehead.

* * *

Kristoff found that he could not grieve until she was well and truly gone. He tried to get it over with, tried to cry, as if he could get the tears out of the way before Anna actually took her last breath. Maybe, he thought, in doing so, he could be strong when it really happened, because he was not alone and his children would not know what to make of their father's tears.

But the most his eyes would do was mist over.

* * *

Anna was taken from him on a Wednesday afternoon in October.

The small part of him that was still naïve expected there to be an aura of death around her, but there was not, and so he was sitting with her on the bed, plucking at the strings of his mandolin, before he realized that the room was too quiet.

"Anna?" he asked, not expecting an answer.

Only the sound of the fire in the hearth greeted him.

Her face, when he felt courageous enough to look, appeared to be calm. She was almost smiling.

It was suitable, he decided, that Anna would enter his life smiling, and leave it in the same way.

The mandolin made a soft noise as he set it on the bed. "Goodbye, Anna," he said, feeling strong as he kissed her face and brushed back her hair.

* * *

Kristoff noticed, not for the first time, that Elsa's face was lined far more than it should have been, considering her age. He was surprised to realize that he understood the lines as if they were his own; he knew what had caused each and every one.

"You are staying here, of course." It was the first thing she said to him when she found her voice, and it sounded strained—desperate.

He forced his own words to be steady. "Yeah. Of course."

Elsa gave him a smile, but it was crooked and tight and so, so sad. He wished for Anna again, for the millionth time in the last few hours, but this time, he wished for her for Elsa's sake instead of his own. Nobody could make Queen Elsa smile like Anna could, and now Elsa looked as if she might fall apart.

Kristoff was not sure what to do about it, but he had to do something—had to try. Anna had taught him that much.

"I'm no good at this stuff," he said, embarrassed and sad and strangely numb, "but… Do you want a hug? Would that help?"

Elsa gave a little jerk of her head, a nod, and he stepped forward to wrap his arms around her. There was no sound but the cloth of her dress as she lifted her arms to return the gesture.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there," she said after a long moment, and then sniffed—just once. "I wanted to be, I just—no. It's no excuse. I should have been there."

He pulled back, then, and looked at Elsa. "Anna has always respected and understood your role as queen," he said, firmly.

If she wanted to argue with him, she didn't. She sniffed again and said, almost under her breath, "I can't believe she's gone."

"Me either," he said, and it was the truth. Everyone had known for months that Anna would not live, but it still hurt to see her so _still_. "She was almost smiling when I found her." He stepped back to run a hand through his hair. "I guess she must've seen something she liked, right there at the end."

If Elsa thought he was crazy, she didn't say so. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and said, almost to herself, "I will not miss _this_ funeral."

* * *

"What did you think of me when we first met?"

"What?"

Anna snuggled up against his side, let her legs intertwine with his. "When we first met, you know. What did you think of me?"

He grinned and reached down to tweak her nose. "I thought you were a pest."

"Hey!"

He laughed. "Okay, I thought you were cute. Really cute, actually. And then I realized you were crazy."

She laughed at that.

"But in a brave sort of way."

"Brave?"

"Sure. Before I'd even known you for a couple of days you'd already thrown a pick-axe at me and ordered me to guide you up the mountain, smacked a wolf in the face with a mandolin, and jumped off of a cliff."

"I _was_ pretty brave back then, wasn't I?"

"What are you talking about?" he asked. "You still are."

"Not _really_," she said, sounding shy.

Kristoff wasn't sure what it was he wanted to say to her, so he scooped her up in a hug and said the only thing that he was thinking at the moment, which was a warm, "I love you."

She giggled and hugged him back.

"Always," she said against his shoulder.

* * *

Kristoff heard the argument outside of his daughters' room. He knocked, and when he opened the door, was surprised to see Elsie wearing a dress the color of a robin's egg.

"Papa," said Annelise, sounding relieved. "She won't wear the black one. I've tried for an hour to make her wear it."

Elsie crossed her arms over her chest, lower lip sticking out. She looked like a blonde, brown-eyed version of her mother; it made his breath catch in a sad sort of way.

"Mama hates black," she said. "I'm not wearing black to tell her goodbye."

Annelise threw her hands up. "See?" she asked. "I've tried and tried, but she just doesn't get that you're _supposed_ to wear black to a funer—"

"Blue is fine," he said, suddenly exhausted. "Maybe you should wear the green dress. Or the yellow one."

"Green? _Yellow_? Papa!"

"Well, it's up to you," he said, and gave his oldest daughter a smile, "but your mother did love color."

When they lined up in the main hall to leave, Kristoff noticed that Annelise wore yellow beneath her heavy black cloak.

* * *

The sky was a chalky grey on the day of the funeral. People said things like, "I'm sorry," and, "My deepest condolences for your loss," but it didn't help, it didn't make things better. It didn't make the hurt that Kristoff felt go away.

When his son tugged on his pants, he crouched down. "What is it?"

"Mama's not coming back?" Christopher asked.

The adults who were close enough to hear watched him carefully, turned to hear better, wondered, he knew, what kind of answer he would give.

"No," he said, deciding on the truth.

"Does that mean there won't be any more stories?"

"Christopher," said Annelise, appearing just in time. "Elsie and I have found some flowers for Mama. Would you like to help us with them?"

* * *

"It should have been me."

Kristoff almost jumped at the voice even though he recognized it. "What?" he asked, gaze moving to the kids, who were far enough away that they could not overhear the conversation.

Elsa was quiet for a long time before she stepped forward to stand beside him. "It should have been me," she repeated, voice so matter-of-fact that it startled him more than the words she spoke.

He opened his mouth as if to speak, but closed it again when he realized that he didn't know what to say.

"I'm the oldest," Elsa continued, as if to explain her reasoning, and turned to give him something like a smile. "I was supposed to go before her."

"That's not how it works," he said, not unkindly.

"I know." She lifted her eyes to meet his. In them, he saw her question: _why am I always the one being left behind?_ But he didn't have an answer for her.

* * *

The walk back to the castle was difficult.

"Why are you walking so _slow_, Papa?" Christopher asked him.

The reason was too complicated to explain to a child. Instead, Kristoff forced a smile and said, "What? Did you want to race me back?"

* * *

"Kristoff," Elsa said, holding a steaming cup of tea in her hand, and, he suspected, not feeling the heat of it at all. The kitchens were quiet. They had both put off returning to their individual rooms for hours.

"Hm?"

"I…" She shook her head just the smallest bit, and moved to stand in front of him. "Good night," she whispered, glancing up from the steam of her drink.

He hesitated to say it, but finally did, feeling out of place. "Elsa." When a question flickered in her eyes, he put a hand on her shoulder; it felt too thin, but he squeezed anyway, gently. "You're family. I know you're the queen, but if you ever need anything… The kids and I… Well, if you need someone to talk to, or a distraction, or whatever…we'll be here."

She smiled and said, voice shaking, "Thank you."

* * *

As soon as Kristoff closed the bedroom door behind him, he forced himself into busyness. He made a fire in the hearth, he changed for bed, he plumped the pillows, and he slid under the covers making as much noise as possible.

That was when it hit him: Anna was not coming back.

The other side of the bed was still, and when he reached out to touch it, to run his hands over the sheets, they were cool and smooth.

He swallowed hard. "Anna?" he whispered.

There was no answer.

The silence was what hurt. Leaning over, he scooped up his mandolin from where it rested against the nightstand, and picked at the strings idly for what felt like a long time. Almost without realizing it, he started playing that embarrassing duet.

Maybe because Anna was right: it did remind him a little of meeting her, of her slamming open that door and throwing things at him; he could still, if he tried very hard, remember exactly how she had sounded when she ordered him to take her up the North Mountain.

He smiled to himself at the memory, and kept playing the song as if to keep it in his mind for just a little while longer.


End file.
